Bottom line: A sharp
and witty satire about the international arms trade.

"Lord of War"
is an oddly satisfying mesh of an international action-adventure with an extremely
dark satire about the global arms trade. Writer-director Andrew Niccol says he
has based his story on actual events and created in his anti-hero a composite
of five real-life arms dealers. Operating on the theory it is better to laugh
than to cry, Niccol treats the rising fortunes of such a creature with comic
irony. And in Nicolas Cage, he has a leading man who can behave with anti-humanitarian
instincts and still compel audience fascination.

Production notes indicate
this is a $50 million project, modest for an international escapade but high
for a movie whose dark subject matter veers from the mainstream. It's a playable
film with colorful characters and exotic locales, but without festival exposure,
from which it may have benefited, "Lord of War" will need strong marketing
to reach its audience.

The film is intelligently
crafted from beginning to end. Opening credits express the ensuing story succinctly
by following the manufacture and delivery of bullets right up to the point one
is about to enter a young boy's brain.

Cage's Yuri Orlov narrates
the story of his evolution into an illegal gun-runner. Normally, a voice-over
narration presages weaknesses in the script. Not here. This narration is filled
with wry observations about the international conspiracy to get guns and ammo
into those regions of the world where they will do the most harm.

Yuri's family emigrated
to the U.S. from Soviet-controlled Ukraine when he was a boy by falsely claiming
to be Jewish. So, in essence, everything about Yuri is B.S., from his rationale
that dealers in cars and cigarettes actually deliver more death than he does
to his insistence to trophy wife, Ava (Bridget Moynahan), that his business is
international transport.
His climb out of the Little Odessa immigrant community in Brighton Beach, N.Y.,
initially includes his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto). But gun-running turns Vitaly
into an all-purpose addict. Yuri soldiers on, though, donning a suit and tie
to meet the world's worst despots and warlords.

Even so, he has a hard time
maintaining the guise of extreme wealth for his wife until the fall of the Soviet
Union offers the largest bonanza of arms in history: More than $32 billion in
arms get stolen from the Ukraine alone. For Yuri, it's an inside job, as his
Uncle Dmitri, a perpetually soused army general, has the keys to the cache.

His competition comes from
Ian Holm's silky smooth Simeon Weisz, who has enough conscience to trade with
what he believes to be the politically righteous side. But Yuri's unprincipled
methods work best with figures such as maniacal Liberian strongman Andre Baptiste
(Eamonn Walker) and his equally crazed son Andre Jr. (Sammi Rotibi).

As with Joseph Heller's
great war novel "Catch-22," the comedy stems from your understanding
that in war things really are this bad. What can one do but laugh at a guy who
wears a bullet on a chain necklace, like a coke dealer's gold spoon, or worries
more about catching AIDS in Africa than what his business is doing to the people?

Cage is brilliant. His Yuri
is numb to reality, seeing only the next deal. He wears this stoicism as a badge
of pride. The brother's spin out of control is the only realistic reaction one
can have to the horror he sees and helps perpetuate. Leto's Vitaly is a kid who
never should have left his parents' borscht restaurant.

Moynahan's character is
hard to read because the movie views Ava only as Yuri sees her. Moynahan doesn't
come into her home until her final scenes. Ethan Hawke as Interpol agent Jack
Valentine, who dogs Yuri's trail for years, is perhaps too naive. Walker and
Rotibi manage the trick of finding comedy in total insanity.

The production gets terrific
mileage out of locations in South Africa, the Czech Republic and New York City,
creating First and Third World countries worthy of a John le Carre novel.